You remember the field of peas and barley that was planted just before we had our last real rain back at the end of April- it was the cover crop for the alfalfa that was going to be seeded in that field. The peas and barley were already coming up when the alfalfa finally got seeded when it was dry enough. You can see the baby alfalfa plants hiding with the weeds under the peas/barley. In the photo where you can see Garry's Ukrainian workshoes (plastic sandals) you can see an unusual weed- there was a crop of pumpkins on this field last year (not the big orange kind -but a squash-like pumpkin grown commercially for seed - like the kind of pumpkin seed you eat roasted.)If you are wondering what is in Garry's MP3 player, since he's got his headphones on, its a learning Russian program he's been listening too (and talking to himself with) since last year.
The field looks OK but a good rain this week will make a lot more silage when its cut in a couple weeks. Garry is thinking that will happen when the barley is in boot stage- to make a feed similiar to corn silage since that pile will be gone soon. That way it can replace the corn silage in the feed ration which is a high-energy rather than a protein-rich feed (like hay) for the cows.
The corn is coming up in the field you get to by winding through a "road" past the pond-check out the pair of pheasants crossing the road- there are some bare spots but it looks like they are coming- just planted a little deeper as the planter bounced across the field. This corn silage will likely have some sunflowers in it when it is chopped for silage, since they are coming up from the crop that was grown there last year. This the field that we were given to work that was not plowed up last fall- all those sunflower stalks were a challenge to work up this spring. You may remember that we have control (mostly by renting) different shares, but since some are landlocked, the big crop farmer trades us equal pieces that are near a road through the fields.
Garry is looking to buy or borrow a sprayer because the corn fields need to have some weed control soon. Of course this field would appreciate the rain too, but there is only small chances of scattered thundershowers in the forecast. On Tuesday three times rain fell- the kind of rain where you can see where the drops loaded in the dust. The corn field across the highway got a more significant amount of rain two weeks ago than we had in the village during the only shower lately, so it is maybe up better than this field.
Our tiny alfalfa field is cut- on Tuesday Serosia (the neighbor with the payloader) borrowed a tractor and mover to cut hay, so Garry told him to mow ours too (I think he was trying to invite the rain to fall) So he ended up mowing down a number of small pieces of alfalfa for people in the village.
Yesterday Maxim was out with the tractor and disc in the morning- to help someone enlarge their garden that borders the pond. He said it when well- except he got stuck when he ended up with the wheels in the pond- he couldn't tell where it was due to the tall grass. Serosjai came and got the loader tractor to pull him out. I was teasing him about taking the tractor swimming at lunch- but he said it wasn't in deep enough to swim- it was wading I guess. Anyway we like to help people in the village whenever we can.
Many people who have cows to feed are busy making hay, on Sunday when we came home from church we saw several Ladas with trailers parked along the highway, cutting grass with sickles/scythes and gathering it up. They bring it home and spread it across the yard to dry before making it into haystacks. Yesterday we passed this Lada on the way home from Dnepropetroesk- I guess he doesn't have a trailer-those bags are full of grass ready to become hay- because the back seat was stacked full of loose hay!
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